Months after a Toronto woman filed a human rights complaint against a Muslim barber who would not give her a haircut, the issue has been quietly resolved.
During a closed-door mediation session Friday, Faith McGregor and barbershop owner Omar Mahrouk came to an “arrangement” that satisfied them both, thus putting the controversial complaint to rest.
Ms. McGregor filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal last June after she entered Terminal Barbershop on a whim and was denied a haircut because it is against the barbers’ religion to touch a woman.
Both Ms. McGregor and Mr. Mahrouk signed a confidentiality agreement that bars them from sharing any details — common practice when a conflict ends in mediation instead of moving on to an actual tribunal. But both expressed relief in the process.
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“I feel good. I feel relieved of stress,” Mr. Mahrouk said. “It felt really stressful for the past few days, just waiting for the [mediation session].”
His worried that the future of his business would hang in the balance, he said, but in the end, he’s happy with the agreement the two came up with.
“I probably wasn’t as stressed out as he was because I think there was more at stake for him,” Ms. McGregor said. “The resolution we came to I think is good. I’m satisfied with it,” she said, adding that she feels the process worked.
“I’m happy with the outcome.”
The complaint made headlines in November as a hot button issue and a textbook example of competing rights — his, the right to freedom of religion and hers the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of gender.
In an interview with the Post in November, Ms. McGregor explained her decision to use the commission to resolve this dispute.
“I realized at the time [of filing the complaint] these rights are diametrically opposed and I said ‘Ok, we can’t come up with a solution — he’s not happy, I’m not happy, I’m going to bring it strictly based on the one piece of the code that I feel was in violation of my particular human rights and bring it to the tribunal and go ‘what do we do about this?’” she said then. “It was to really start a dialogue to resolve the situation, but also to start a dialogue because this isn’t the first time that this is going to happen.”
When the story hit the media, Mr. Mahrouk declined to say much, but his colleague spoke with the Toronto Star:
“We live for our values. We are people who have values and we hold on to it. I am not going to change what the faith has stated to us to do. This is not extreme — this is just a basic value that we follow,” Karim Saaden, co-owner of the Terminal Barber Shop, told the paper.
In the ensuring debate, public opinion split into two camps — one that felt Mr. Mahrouk’s right of religion and right to deny service superseded Ms. McGregor’s right to service without discrimination, and one that felt the opposite.National Post

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